Purim 5786/2026 is part of the 250 years since the American Revolution, and which is why we went with “A Revolutionary Purim” as a theme.
When thinking of a family costume along the lines of the American Revolution and Colonial Times, the Boston Tea Party came up in our brainstorming. While Americans are the ones who threw the overtaxed tea into the harbor, we still thought tea to be fitting and a good idea for our family’s Purim costume this year.
We each had sweatshirts for favorite teas (or colors) from Chai Spice (Mendel) to Tangerine Orange (Raizy) and each sibling their own flavor. Chani ironed on the tea logo/covers onto the appropriate color sweatshirt, and even made a hanging tag for each of us. And our Mishloach Manot packages had a tea-bag mesh feel, and a little tag tagging us attached to it.
TEA as plenty of puns to go with it: I’d say we have a Quali-TEA crew, or maybe we can be considered Special-TEA family with a Communi-TEA feel.
And Mendel’s Zeide Moshe has a vurt about tea (that pre-dates the iced-tea invention). He’d say: “Tea and Tehillim (Psalms) are always appropriate, but they both have to be warm.”
Tea also has a good message about total immersion and personal investment: The longer you let it steep, the more flavorful it becomes. You get most out of it, when you let it steep and be “in it” for longer.